There has been many a time when I have been asked by my friends, well, more like asked in a disgruntled manner by my friends, why in the world I race bikes. There are many perfectly legitimate reasons for my friends to be disgruntled with me. ‘You’re never around, you never want to go out, and we can’t do anything on the weekend because you have a bike race.’ And I do feel bad! I really do. I know that I am half-human half-bicycle, and if you have the off chance of actually getting me to be social there is a good chance I will be yawning and blearily responding to your queries. I must look like a soulless zombie. When it gets to this point, where I realize I haven’t seen my friends in weeks, or I missed an ‘awesome party’ because I had to go to sleep for a bike race I start the long chain of regret. What if I was a normal girl? What if I went to parties, and went on dates and went shopping? I usually get to about this point, and then the reasons that I do lead the lifestyle of bikes come back to me: I won’t be fat in ten years, I’m not a hung-over disaster on Saturday morning (those are reserved for post collegiate nationals), and I have a goal I want to achieve.
I look at the general trend of what a normal life consists of, that same normal life that I sometimes lament not having when I have to suit up for a four hour ride after work, and I have to admit I pout sometimes, but then I look closer and I start to see the cracks.
From what I can see a normal life of someone from my generation means partying like it’s 1999 every weekend, being hung-over from Tuesday to Wednesday, and then starting the cycle over again on Thursday night. Hmm. When I do happen to jump into this cycle is never ceases to amaze me. All the girls around me preen themselves like peacocks to go out for the evening. Now don’t get me wrong. I love going out for beers with friends, but all night? When my friends do manage to drag me out I am an interesting human being to contend with, especially if I happen to be wearing shorts.
“Frances, you cannot wear those shorts.”
“Why not?”
“You have the most RIDICULOUS TAN LINES.”
“But I like my tan lines!”
After this battle is over, and my friends grudgingly let me go out in public with my tan lines we go through the usual motions, but it’s always the same. It gets past one and I am ready for bed. I’m grandma of the group. I want to go home and go to sleep, or you could give me more beers and I will tell everyone at the bar how awesome my tan lines are. Pick one.
The ability my friends have to stay out until five in the morning playing beer pong however, still manages to impress me. The stamina, the stamina! But then I realize that nothing is without a price. I wake up at a normal hour, drink some water, and I’m ready to go. My friends wake up at three in the afternoon, cover their heads with a pillow, and curse the day they were born. See, I’m not so strange after all! I have the normal amount of energy for a person my age, I just funnel it into things during the day, like bike riding, and hot dog eating contests, so I am tired at night damnit! If I slept until three then you’re damn right I would be able to stay up all night.
This whole revelation got even better a couple mornings ago when I stumbled upon a housewife magazine called Real Simple. Between the ads for bathing suits for women with ‘generous hips and thighs’ the four page articles about the merits of various cleaning products coupled with pictures of a joyous housewife in a polka-dotted sundress merrily standing on a ladder dusting the top of a light, and the inspirational quotes about how women love cleaning I think I may have burned my retinas. I cannot un-see this. This is an entire magazine about being a household slave. It’s thick too! It’s no small page-flipper. If this were all a sick joke I may be able to forgive them, but it was not, to my horror, it was not.
What’s even worse is this could have been my potential future.
Is that what my generation is going for? A decade of partying followed by an insidious slide in housewifism? No thank you. I don’t want that, I don’t want that to be my life. So in moments like this, I go quietly down the stairs to where my brand new BH bike is waiting patiently for its next ride and I hug it. You and me kid, we’ve got a ticket to sanity.
